Gardening and Composting

The story of our evolving Worm Bin Our failures and Success! I am fast becoming an expert on how NOT to do things. My gut has been tugging at me that our family should do better with conservation since our environment seems to be suffering from something that is causing changes to our weather and ability to grow food due to too much heat, too much water, not enough water etc. My husband and I first made a solar oven which is another story, then made a bin for worm composting to recycle food scraps and give back to the earth. I read constantly about both of these issues and thought that it would be simple but…… Day 1 The worm composting b ......

SQUASH BLOOMS If you are growing squash leaves and many squash blooms but no squash, your problem could be, No Bees............... I am not sure but this is my own backyard study. This is a female squash bloom. At the back side of this bloom there is a tiny squash, this bloom is attached to the small squash. This is a male squash bloom. You probably have a lot of these because usually there are many more male blooms and at first and few female blooms. At least this is my experience. This close up of the female bloom shows where the squash must be pollinated. The bee needs to first visit the male, gather the pollen and c ......

WHAT IS GROWING AT OUR HOUSE? We are adding the most recent photo's first, some of the beginning of these projects may be further down. I will be updating new 2010 photos very soon. Now that it is winter the garden is resting. We have added some new winter items though, we just planted three citrus trees close to the house so we can hopefully keep them from freezing. We do have carrots growing in our keyhole garden. I planted them in November, The long freeze that we had did not harm them. I did spread a light layer of straw over them during that freeze. Posted Feb 3 2010 End of May 2009 Tomatoes, seeds were planted end of January insi ......

When Monkey Grass Dies Out is is very dry! This summer has been a garden disaster. DROUGHT! Ugh………. Heat, s w e a t! MOSQUITO”S! I thought at least the mosquito’s would die from the drought! This was our strawberry bed but with drought and water restrictions the strawberries may not make it. Even when we do water it does not seem to get to the plants due to our trees. Their need is much greater and the trees soak up every drop of moisture. Even though it has been really bad we still learned a lot about gardening. As I have mentioned in articles from the past. My husband and I learn from trial and error. Mostly error. This is our tenth year to garden in our ......

WHAT IS GROWING AT OUR HOUSE? PAGE ONE OUR GARDEN IS DOING WELL, DESPITE THE THREE DIGIT NUMBERS AND LACK OF RAIN. WE HAVE A BABY WATERMELON! Late June 2009 Our Blackeyed susans are attracting many honey bees June 2009 Up close blackeyed susan Notice the ants on the okra? Well they are eating the aphids off the okra. Okra Bloom Late June 2009 The Sunflower is starting to make seed! Late June 2009 Katie in the watermellon patch No, we are not growing eggs............ I wish.......... That is a white eggplant June 2009 Amish salad tomatoes, I ordered the seed this past winter. Now June 2009 More toma ......

What are we planning? I am re-posting this page because we learn from our gardening mistakes and looking back can show how far we have come from earlier days. It is now 2010. We will be taking many photos this year 2009 as we work on being more sustainable. We started much earlier than we usually do to grow vegetables (possibly too early). We already have our potatoes planted and they are already coming up. We have lettuce growing, horseradish is coming up, beets are starting to emerge, we have onions planted and already getting tall, we have garlic that is growing well and turnip and mustard greens that are sprouting. I have included on th ......